Telling Their Stories Article from Linda MacDonald

Telling Their Life Stories, Older Adults Find Peace in Looking Back

By SUSAN B. GARLAND DEC. 9, 2016

Isabella Bick started writing stories about her life about seven years ago as part of a program called Guided Autobiography. Some of her stories involve the pain of being a refugee when she was a young girl. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

ISABELLA S. BICK’S parents, both Jewish physicians, never talked about the past after the family moved from Fascist Italy to the United States in 1939. She was 8 at the time and quickly learned it was best to keep her feelings of loss and loneliness to herself.

Her silence ended — and those emotions broke free — when Ms. Bick, now 84 and a psychotherapist living in Sharon, Conn., began writing bits and pieces of her life story a few years ago. In one vignette, she describes the trauma of moving with her parents and younger brother into a cramped apartment with her father’s Russian family in Troy, N.Y.

Her parents dealt with their grief by refusing to speak Italian at home or to reminisce about their life in Europe. So young Isabella did not tell them about the schoolmates who taunted her or the teacher who shouted at her. She was determined “to invent an American little girl” as quickly as possible, reading poems aloud each night until she lost her accent.

In bed, though, she slept with the brown lambskin coat that she had worn on the ocean voyage to America. Ms. Bick writes that she had “endowed Coat with very special magical qualities” and that she dreamed of returning to her home in Tuscany and her beloved nanny. “With Coat close to me, I felt I could hide my Italian self, not yet totally lost, and not yet reveal my still unformed American self — I could hold on precariously to both — for a little while longer.”

Like many older people who write their life stories, Ms. Bick found some peace in looking back. “Writing is painful because it brings back memories,” she said in a recent interview. But when she began writing, Ms. Bick said, she recognized “that there was this joyous little girl” whom she could finally “reclaim.” And she described “an awe that I survived some of the things I went through.”

Ms. Bick, who has three children and three grandchildren, considers her stories a gift to future generations — and to past ones. “I am keeping my parents and grandparents alive,” she said. “And, as an egotist, I am keeping myself alive. I am remembered.”

Whether they are writing full-blown memoirs or more modest sketches or vignettes, many older people like Ms. Bick are telling their life stories. Some are taking life-story writing classes at local colleges, libraries and adult learning centers, while others are hiring “personal historians” to record oral histories or to produce videos that combine interviews, home movies and family photos. Some opt to write a “legacy letter,” which imparts values to the next generations. New websites enable families to create digital personal histories that can be preserved for their descendants.

This photograph of the family of Isabella Bick’s mother was taken in Kalisz, Poland. Those who remained in Poland were later killed in the Holocaust. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Ms. Bick took a course called Guided Autobiography, in which a trained instructor draws out students’ memories and helps them channel their thoughts and recollections into essays. Most guided autobiography classes are taught in person, but Ms. Bick joined five other participants and the instructor on a special interactive website to write and share stories over 10 weekly sessions. They could see one another in little windows on the screen as they explored life themes like family, money and spirituality.

Cheryl Svensson, who is the director of the Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies and who taught Ms. Bick’s class, said she had trained more than 300 instructors worldwide.

Pat McNees, who conducts guided autobiography classes in person in Bethesda, Md., said getting feedback from a supportive group “gives you a perspective on your life.” For example, Ms. McNees said, someone whose family struggled with money problems but spent lots of time together may come out with a “positive take on life” when listening to another participant who had a lonely childhood because the father was always at work.

Research by many gerontologists — including James E. Birren, who created the discipline of guided autobiography — has found that reminiscing can improve the confidence of older adults. By recalling how they overcame past struggles, they are better able to confront new challenges, doctors say, and they may be able to forgive themselves for their mistakes. Moreover, a life review can help with grieving, research has found.

Armed with this knowledge, many nursing homes and assisted living facilities are offering storytelling programs. Bonita Heilman has conducted about 20 story groups — in which three or four residents meet for five or six sessions — at the Harbor, an assisted-living center in Norwood Young America, Minn. Ms. Heilman, the center’s life enrichment coordinator, uses a program called Life Reflection Story, developed by Celebrations of Life, a company in Minneapolis.

Ms. Heilman will ask questions on topics like childhood and parents. She then compiles each resident’s life story, and family photographs, into a bound book of about 30 pages.

Most Harbor residents were farmers. “They tell stories about when they were productive citizens working toward the greater good,” Ms. Heilman said. “Remembering gives them self-esteem at a time when they can no longer do the things they once could do.”

 Isabella Bick with her mother, Taula Bick, in a photograph taken in Milan around 1934. The Bick family later fled Italy for the United States. Credit Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

One resident, Sylvia Kuenzel, 88, said she “had fun listening to the stories” of the other two residents in her group. Mrs. Kuenzel said she got a real lift when she thought for the first time in years about her favorite childhood Christmas gift: a pair of white ankle boots.

In her story book, Mrs. Kuenzel writes that her “saddest childhood memory” was when her father’s grocery store fell on hard times and her parents had to sell their two-story home in the small farming town of Lafayette, Minn. Her parents and their seven children moved into two bedrooms behind the store. Looking back at her parents’ difficult lives, Mrs. Kuenzel said in a recent interview, “I think I appreciate them more than I did at the time.”

Mrs. Kuenzel gave up her job as a nurse when she married a farmer, Dennis, who died in 2013. She described farming as round-the-clock work. But writing her story, she said, helped her see that she had dealt well with the hardships and created a good life for her four children. “I made it, so I guess I was O.K.,” Mrs. Kuenzel said. She also “realized what is most important” — and it was a comfort to share those lessons with her children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Among those lessons: the importance of focusing on the positive, hard work and treating people right.

Storytelling also can benefit terminally ill patients by addressing their need to feel that life has purpose. One end-of-life treatment is called Dignity Therapy, which was developed by Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Manitoba. During a 30- to 60-minute audiotaped session, a therapist will ask patients questions about their most important accomplishments, the experiences that made them feel most alive and their hopes for loved ones. Patients can give the transcribed interview to friends and family.

Lori P. Montross-Thomas, a psychologist in the La Jolla community in San Diego, who was trained as a dignity therapist by Dr. Chochinov, said she recalled one man who had talked about an arduous hike with friends. After bad weather set in that day, he told her, he walked ahead to the base camp. He remembered the joy on his friends’ faces when he greeted them with hot chocolate. These patients “may have lost the ability to be in physical control, but when they share that kind of story, their body goes back there,” said Dr. Montross-Thomas, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego. “And they get to share the stories of their strengths with loved ones.”

In several studies of dignity therapy, patients reported an increased sense of purpose and meaning. A study of family members of patients who had died said the transcripts consoled them while they grieved.

Hearing a parent’s story may be as important to the adult child as it is to the older person telling it. Bill Erwin, 69, who lives in Durham, N.C., interviewed his father, using a tape recorder, many years ago. He said he cherished the story about how his grandfather peddled pianos from the back of his truck to rural households in Hope, Ark., during the Depression. “That’s how he made enough sales to keep the lights on at his music store,” Mr. Erwin said.

It is a story of resourcefulness that Mr. Erwin is passing on to his two sons. He says he regrets not collecting more stories from his parents, and he wants to ensure his sons don’t have similar regrets — so now he is writing his own life story vignettes. And Mr. Erwin, a retired communications executive, has started a new business: creating personal-history videos for other families.

Discipline of Centering Prayer

 Fr. George Maloney wrote an eight-day retreat experience called “Alone With The Alone”. This retreat book is written from the stance of contemplative prayer. Also,  Fr. Thomas Keating through his writing on contemplative prayer, explains the discipline of Centering prayer in his book "Open Mind, Open Heart". Paradoxically, my discovery of the writings of both Maloney and Keating happened at the same time, and they blended together in such a way as to provide a path of light that I would follow in the years to come.

    

Maloney’s approach was simple. Over an eight-day period, he guides one through an exploration of Jesus’ life from a contemplative perspective, providing scripture reflections, but more importantly, times of stillness, times to listen to the gentle movements of the spirit within oneself. In the introduction, he would write: (pg. 24)

“To contemplate is to move beyond your own activity and become activated by the inner power of the Holy Spirit. It means to be swept up into the threefold love current of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the silent prayer of the heart, a gift of the Spirit praying within you, you move beyond feelings, emotions, even thoughts. The Spirit is so powerfully operative that imagining or reasoning can only be noise that disturbs the silent communication of God at the core of your being. If you introduce “noise” by speaking words and fashioning images of God, then you are limiting His freedom to speak His word as He wishes, when He wishes. The Holy Spirit frees you so God can give Himself to you. With utter freedom and joy, respond always in deep silence and humble self-surrender to His inner presence.”

  

Fr. Thomas Keating’s book “Open Mind Open Heart”, although on the same subject, was entirely different. It was more like a “how to do” book explaining what contemplation is and what it is not, the history of contemplation, a chapter by chapter description on how to do it followed by a very detailed discussion on the difficulties encountered by others with responses. Although it is not my purpose here to explain the techniques of centering prayer, I have quoted the following from his book (pg. 110) to explain his teaching.

The method

“To do this systematically, take up a comfortable position that will enable you to sit still. Close your eyes. Half of the world disappears for we generally think most about what we see. In order to slow down the usual flow of thoughts, think just one thought. For this purpose choose a word of one or two syllables with which you feel comfortable.

A general loving look toward God may be better suited to the disposition of some persons. But the same procedures are followed as in the use of the sacred word. The word is a sacred word because it is the symbol of your intention to open yourself to the mystery of God’s presence beyond thoughts, images and emotions. It is chosen not for its content but for its intent. It is merely a pointer that expresses the direction of your inward movement towards the presence of God.

To start, introduce the sacred word in your imagination as gently as if you were laying a feather on a piece of absorbent cotton. Keep thinking the sacred word in whatever form it arises. It is not meant to be repeated continuously. The word can flatten out, become vague or just an impulse of the will, or even disappear. Accept it in whatever form it arises.

When you become aware that you are thinking some other thoughts, return to the sacred word as the expression of your intent. The effectiveness of this prayer does not depend on how distinctly you say the sacred word or how often, but rather on the gentleness with which you introduce it into your imagination in the beginning and the promptness with which you return to it when you are hooked on some other thought.

Thoughts are an inevitable part of centering prayer. Our ordinary thoughts are like boats sitting on a river so closely packed together that we cannot see the river that is holding them up. A thought in the context of this prayer is any perception that crosses the inner screen of consciousness. We are normally aware of one object after another passing across the inner screen of consciousness: images, memories, feelings, external impressions. When we slow down that flow for a little while, space begins to appear between the boats. Up comes the reality on which they are floating.

The prayer of centering is a method of directing your attention from the particular to the general, from the concrete to the formless. At first you are preoccupied by the boats that are going by. You become interested in seeing what is on them. But just let them all go by. If you catch yourself becoming interested in them, return to the sacred word as the expression of the movement of your whole being toward God present within you.

The sacred word is a simple thought that you are thinking at ever deepening levels of perception. That’s why you accept the scared word in whatever form it arises within you. The word on your lips is exterior and has no part in this form of prayer. The thought in you imagination is interior; the word as an impulse of your will is more interior still. Only when you pass beyond the word into pure awareness is the process of interiorization complete. That is what Mary of Bethany was doing at the feet of Jesus. She was going beyond the words she was hearing to the Person who was speaking and entering into union with Him. This is what we are doing as we sit in centering prayer interiorizing the sacred word. We are going beyond the sacred word into union with that to which it points—the Ultimate Mystery, the Presence of God, beyond any perception that we can form of him.” 

So this became my practice, and it opened up pathways to moments with the Lord that surpassed all my previous experience. The Lord always seem to catch my attention through consolation, and then gently lead me to solid ground where participation with Him is sought without so much inner fanfare and delight. The danger with too much consolation is that we can begin to seek it instead of maturing into a union with God based on faith along. Without God’s gentle wisdom on this matter, we can end up chasing after the wake of the ship when God wants to take us on board where we can be shaped into a proper vehicle of His love and service. But at the same time, grace beckons us to let go of any resistances to God’s love and to flow with ease towards this way of life He desires for us.

It was never too difficult for me to discipline myself to practice this prayer for the recommended two sessions a day of at least twenty minutes each. I looked forward to this time and gauged the rest of my day around these grace filled  times of just sitting in silence before the Lord.

The Strangers In The Box

Come, look with me inside this drawer
In this box I've often seen
At the pictures, black and white
Faces proud, still and serene.

I wish I knew the people
These strangers in the box
Their names and all their memories
Are lost among the socks.

I wonder what their lives were like, 
How did they spend their days/
What about their special times?
I'll never know their ways.

If only someone would have taken time,
To tell who, what, and when,
Those faces of my heritage
Would come to life again.

Could this become the fate
Of the pictures we take today?
The faces and the memories
Someday to be tossed away.

Make time to save your pictures
Seize the opportunity when it knocks
Or someday you and yours could be
The strangers in the Box.

Pam Harazim

Legacy Writing Course St. John XXIII

GUIDED AUTOBIOGRAPHY:

WRITING THE STORY OF OUR LIVES

Saint John XX111 Parish April 11 - June 06 ,2017

The Catholic Grandparents Association of Saint John XX111 Parish in Dartmouth is reoffering Guided Autobiography, a guided writing course based on Dr. James E. Birren's 25 years of autobiographical writing experience in small group settings that was presented to two groups last year in St. John XX111.

The course is 8 weeks long , one 2.5 hour lesson/practicum each week. Your Instructor is Linda MacDonald, retired professor from St. Mary's University and trained in the Birren method at University of Southern California.  (Google: Guided Autobiography: Writing and Telling stories of Lives JE Birren)

A suggested offering for the 8 week course, including lesson materials and background information is $ 38.00 per person.

The course helps us to recall and write our life story, to explore major themes in our lives like work, home, relationships, faith, death and much more. Participants in this course will have a personal , professionally designed summary of your live and faith which makes an excellent gift to pass on to families ...your legacy .

We plan to begin this course on April 11 th. but this may change to meet special requirements .

Contacts: 

Deacon Tom Smith at St. Ignatius 

tesmith@ns.sympatico.ca , 902-835-2910  

Ron Beed, at abeed@eastlink.ca 902-435-5409  

Deacon Len Moore, lenmoore@live.ca  902- 434-0567

Linda at 902-435-1966.

Easter Greeting 2016

From: Catherine Wiley

Sent: Friday, March 25, 2016 5:04 AM

To: abeed@eastlink.ca

Subject: Wishing you a Blessed and Peaceful Easter

 

Dear Ronald

Wishing you the Richest Blessings of Peace, Love, Joy and hope this Easter from the Catholic Grandparents Association. We are growing from strength to strength with your support and we thank you most sincerely for all you do to help us.

 

 

Please be kind enough to print our Easter Newsletter and share with your friends.

 

The Inner Journey

We often think that God is way out there, apart from us, distant.  But that is far from the truth, far from reality.  We experience God as we journey inward, not outward into the world of changing things.  The mountain where God wishes to establish His home, that highest mountain where all nations shall stream towards too find justice and to be instructed in the truth, is not some far away place.  It is within.  We are so caught in this outer visible reality -- what we see, what we need and want, what we feel and think -- that we forget and ignore the reality within, God’s Dwelling place.  We search for Him in distant places, or in our activities, when all that He requires of us is to be still, and journey within; away from the visible; away from the surface.  

St. Theresa of Avila calls it journeying within the interior castle.  Many of us are caught on the outside.  We feel isolated from God, unaware of His plan for our life because we do not venture to where He is.  We must leave this outer place and enter into the inner chamber where He dwells.  The first outer room begins to bring us to some awareness that He is present.  We begin, or at least to desire to conform our outward actions with that inward intuitively call; to bring them in line.  As we venture further in, we experience more of the warmth of His love.  It touches and sooths our soul, and brings it into deeper awareness that something special lies ahead, something we want to be a part of.  We experience an inner awakening to spiritual things, marked with peace, love, gentleness, understanding.  We not only dare to journey on, we desire to move on.  As we enter deeper into this inner chamber, this light and love grows more intensely.  It exposes us to our own darkness, unworthiness.  We sometimes feel very unclean in the presence of such purity, yet the light and love have a transforming effect on us.  It actually transforms our darkness into light.  That which we cling to, or clings to us, fall away, and the inner chamber of our hearts begin to glow with the spirit.  We experience the living water that wells up within.  We experience the light that transforms.  We experience desire to be united with the light, spirit to touch spirit, soul to touch soul.  The outer reality is still there, but sufficiently secure that we no longer seek after it.  What now consumes us is our desire to enter deeper into this new reality that transforms and saves.  So we go on, often guided only by our thirst for that which lies in secret, in silence. 

Occasionally, we touch this inner reality.  Love meeting love.  We’ve arrived home, nothing can surpass the experience of finally arriving at the place sought, but only for a moment, and then some distraction, some thought, some feeling carries us away.  Yet even these touches of grace are sufficient to keep us steadfast in our journey.  

We now dare to venture out into our outer reality, carrying with us the remnants of light, grace and love to be shared with others.  They are such fragile efforts, mere tokens of love compared to its source.  They are more fragments of gold dust taken from the burning fire that lies at the centre of our being, but offering them is like offering our greatest treasure.  They are offered with fear at first, with apprehension that they may be rejected, not seen by others as something of immense value.  But later they are offered more freely, accepted by some, and not by others, but that’s OK.  It’s important that they are offered, given freely away, in imitation of their source.  

Isaiah

In the days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.  All nations shall stream toward it.  Many people shall come and say: Come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain, to the House of God of Jacob, that He may instruct us in His ways, and we may walk in His path.  O House of Jacob, come.  Let us walk in the light of the Lord

Further Understandings of the Journey

My opening journal entry read as follows:

"We have arrived.  Our plane (and us) arrived without a hitch in Louisville at 4:55 PM as promised.  We rented a car at the airport and were on our way.  We had dinner in Bardstown and met Sister Danielle at Bethany Spring at 8:00 P.M.  Everything exceeds my expectations.  The countryside, the sound of crickets, the quietness, all made me realize how precious I find stillness. I can’t believe I’m here, after reading about Gethsemane for nearly twenty years."  
 

After settling in, we went to bed early in order to get up for the 5:45 AM morning prayer at the Abbey.

My wife and I made two trips to Gethsemane; a four day visit in September, 1996 which only whetted our appetites for the much longer five week visit in the spring of 1997.  During these visits, I was given the quiet moments I needed to explore more deeply the writings of Thomas Merton, Thomas Moore, Thomas Keating, George Maloney and others.  

Through their insights, I began to unravel some of the obstructions in my own mysterious journey.

In "Care of the Soul", Thomas Moore wrote: 

“Writers are taught to “write what you know about”.  The

same advise applies to the quest for the power of the soul: be good at what you’re good at.  Many of us spend time and energy trying to be something that we are not.  But this is a move against soul, because individuality rises out of the soul as water rises out of the depth of the earth.  We are who we are because of the special mix that makes up our soul.  Power begins in knowing this special soul, which may be entirely different from our fantasies about who we are or who we want to be.”

Thomas Keating, in his trilogy of books, “Open Mind Open Heart”, Intimacy With God”, and “Invitation to Love” would introduce me to a system of prayer called “centering” which

caused my prayer of stillness to blossom. His books also brought me to a greater understanding of the tension I was experiencing at this point in my life, and thus provided some necessary assurance that many of the things I was experiencing were normal.

According to Keating, I possessed the symptoms of one who was experiencing the “dark night of the senses” an expression coined by St. John of the Cross.

These symptoms included:

(i)  a generalized aridity in both the conventional methods of prayer and discursive meditation, and daily life in general,

(ii)  a manifestation of a fear that one is going backwards, and that through some personal fault or failure we have offended God.

(iii)  an inability or disinclination to practice discursive meditation in which one ponders the teaching and example of Jesus

(iv)  a desire to spend more time alone and in solitude, not for the sake of isolating oneself from society, but to be obscurely in God’s presence.

Let’s look at each of these symptoms in a little more detail.

(i)  I was quite aware that I could not find the same interest in the conventional methods of prayer that use to be very satisfying.  Formal prayer seemed too structured. My attention to this prayer was very distracted, sometimes to the point of having little recollection of the contents of what I read.  Also, the sense of satisfaction that use to come from fulfilling these prayer commitments was dulled and ineffective.  The old enthusiasm for them was not there. Keating would explain this phenomenon in this way:

“This aridity springs from the realization that no created thing can bring us unlimited satisfaction or the satisfaction previously experienced.  In light of this intuition, we know that all the gratifications we were seeking when we were motivated by our emotional programs cannot possibly bring us happiness.  This creates a period of mourning, during which all things that we had counted on to bring us happiness are slowly relativized.”

(ii)  Although I experienced much consolation during my times of solitude and prayer of quiet, I carried with me a sense that following God required that I become more rooted in activity (Christian Service). In wanting to do otherwise, it was as if I was not being charitable, that I was being self-centered.  I carried an underlying belief that this outward action is what God expected of me, and I multiplied these actions in hopes of purging this self-centred attribute.  Again, Keating says:

“During these times, some people mistakenly think it is the end of their relationship with God.  This is not true.  What has ended is there over dependence on the senses and reasoning.  God is really offering a more intimate relationship.  If they would not reflect on their anxious feelings, they would begin to perceive it.”

(iii) In prayer, I spontaneously moved towards more times of quiet and solitude.  I continued with the other types of prayer but ultimately, stillness would result.  My outward prayer activities, however, were principally unsatisfying.  Keating remarks:

“Our ordinary ways of relating to God are being changed to ways that we do not know.  This pulls the rug out from under our plans and strategies for the spiritual journey.  We learn that the journey is a path that cannot be mapped out in advance.  God helps us to disidentify from our preconceived ideas by enlightening us from within.

(iv)  I discovered that looking too close at this tension, or attempting to purge this tension through more activity just did not work.  It only split, to a greater degree, the inner self (which truly wishes to be aligned with God’s will) from the exterior person who identifies and sees him(her) self in the frantic activity that never satisfies.  However, during this time it was difficulty to stop, to become composed, and then to place complete trust in God to do what I was unable to do myself.

A "saving grace" for me at this time (and for many years following) was the discovery of an the eight-day contemplative retreat experience in a book written by Fr. George Maloney SJ called "Alone With The Alone".